„Dostala jsem pažbou jednou přes záda, a to už bylo na nádraží v Rýmařově. Podala jsem nějaké babičce vodu. Byla jsem takový střízlík, malá, tenká, takže mě to vždycky nějak minulo a větší děti dostávali víc a já až jsem podala vodu. Oni už byli ve vagónu a vím, že to byla flaška od octu.“
“We got a ticket: Be at the train station in two weeks time. They collected us directly at the station. We could bring whatever we wanted to with us. But what will you take when they tell you: You’ll be back after the harvest. No one took anything much. Just the bare essentials. I slept on fruit crates and an ironing board in Hané, because there was no furniture. And we were living with millionaires. It was the largest farm in Čelechovice. Another little village. When the harvest was over, they moved us further on, to Grygov. That's a country suburb of Olomouc. From Grygov to Krčmaň - also just to finish the harvest; and then we returned to Rýmařov - but that was thanks to one Ing. Knor, who requested our parents for work.”
“They came to take our house. We could keep what we had on us. Mum just grabbed some papers, and I had to go in my slippers. I didn’t even have shoes, and I remember I cried terribly for my doll. I kept going back. I kept running back to take my doll. It was a matter of thirty minutes and we were out, never to return.”
“When the Russians came to Ondřejov... My father was an ardent bee keeper, and [the Russians] went after the women. Father dug out a bunker under the bee hives, and we all hid there whenever the Russians came to Ondřejov. Those are the memories one has from the end of the war. I saw with my own eyes how they shot the gamekeeper, just as a warning. I was just a chick then. It was by the memorial in Ondřejov.”
Gertruda Polčáková, née Nickmann, was born in 1936 in the village of Ondřejov (German: Andersdorf). Both her parents were of German nationality, but they were not expelled after the war, because of her father’s work in a modelling workshop. The whole family was sent to the concentration camp in nearby Janovice several times. Each time, someone would occupy the house they were living in, and so they were forced to move repeatedly during 1946. In 1947 they were sent to the Hané region, as part of a programme to displace the remaining Germans throughout the country. There they worked in agriculture for two years. They returned to Rýmařov in 1949, and that only thanks to Ing. Knor, who requested Gertruda’s parents for work in his textile mill. The family applied to be transferred to Germany several times, but were denied this by the officials. In Rýmařov, Gertruda married Jan Polčák from Prlov, whose parents’ house had been burnt down in April 1945 by an anti-partisan unit. Gertruda Polčáková still lives in Rýmařov.
